IVR, Bots and Conversational AI

Craft efficient automated workflows or seamlessly integrate with third-party service providers.

At a Glance

Automate processes utilizing IVR, bots, and Conversational AI.

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) empowers users to establish automated applications and seamlessly connect with external automated services to manage a wide range of tasks for both voice and text sessions, spanning from straightforward and repetitive to more intricate operations.

Automation presents an opportunity to optimize call center resources, allowing agents to focus on higher-value tasks and deliver personalized service. With SCC, users can:

Create IVR Flows: Develop Interactive Voice Response (IVR) process flows for voice sessions, streamlining caller interactions.
Build Text Bots: Craft text-based bots to efficiently handle text sessions, providing basic support.
Integrate External AI and Bot Services: Seamlessly integrate external conversational AI and bot services to enhance capabilities and provide more advanced automation.

What sets SCC apart is its accessibility to non-technical personnel. All automated applications and integrations can be established within SCC using Softdial Scripter™, the platform’s fully featured workflow design application. This allows for rapid development and implementation compared to conventional programming methods.

Comprehensive IVR software toolkit

Scripter provides a comprehensive toolkit for crafting IVR call center process flows, or ‘scripts,’ tailored to a wide range of complexities. Utilizing these tools, scripts can:

Receive User Input: Prompt users to input information using DTMF (Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency) or voice recognition.
Interact with Databases or CRMs: Seamlessly connect and interact with databases or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to access and update information.
Deliver Audio Output: Play recorded messages or utilize Text to Speech (TTS) technology to provide information to callers.
Session Control: Manage the session by executing actions like transferring the call to a live agent, and ensuring smooth transitions.
Voicemail Recording: Allow customers to leave voicemail messages for follow-up or record customer queries.

This comprehensive toolkit within Scripter empowers call centers to create versatile IVR scripts, catering to various requirements and enhancing customer interactions.

By harnessing these building blocks, IVR scripting can be crafted to:

Manage Credit Card Status: Automatically block or unblock a customer’s credit card in response to potential fraud and subsequently send an SMS to confirm the status change, enhancing security and convenience.
End-to-End Call Handling: Effectively handle the entirety of inbound or outbound calls, ensuring a seamless customer experience (where local regulations permit).
Incoming Call Validation: Verify and route incoming calls to appropriate queues or live agents based on predefined criteria, streamlining call distribution and customer service.
Live Agent Transfers: Accept transfers from live agents to address specific segments of an inbound or outbound call, providing specialized assistance as needed.
Multichannel Support: Extend IVR capabilities to manage sessions across other media channels such as email and text messaging, leveraging SCC’s Text to Speech and Speech Recognition features for enhanced communication and automation.

These applications showcase the versatility and effectiveness of IVR scripting in optimizing call center operations and enhancing customer interactions.

Agent transfer to IVR system

Call center agents have the flexibility to transfer calls to the IVR phone system during a conversation, relieving them of repetitive tasks or managing specific processes. For instance:

Mandatory Terms Presentation: Agents can transfer calls to the IVR system to present mandatory terms of business and capture an ‘accept’ response from the caller, ensuring legal compliance and documentation.
Secure Payment Handling: In cases where sensitive customer information, such as account passwords, must not be disclosed to the agent, agents can transfer calls to the IVR system to securely collect payment details for PCI compliance.

Upon completion of the IVR application’s task, the call can then be seamlessly passed back to the original agent, ensuring a smooth and efficient customer interaction while adhering to security and compliance standards.

Designing IVR flow

Designing IVR logic flows is a straightforward process with the drag-and-drop tool within Softdial Scripter™. To create a flow, users can simply drag the relevant logic blocks or ‘steps’ onto the design area and connect them logically.

The diagram below serves as an example of an IVR call center script, utilizing just a few standard steps from the extensive library of over 50 provided.

What’s remarkable is that even relatively inexperienced users can assemble and test such a script in just 15 to 20 minutes, underscoring the user-friendly and efficient nature of the Softdial Scripter™ tool.

Upon activation, this script is designed to execute the following steps:

Introductory Greeting: Play an introductory greeting to the caller, instructing them to enter their account number.
Account Number Capture: Capture the account number provided by the caller and save it to a script variable field. If the entry fails (e.g., due to an invalid input), the script may exit or handle the situation as required.
Database Lookup: Conduct a database lookup based on the captured account number to retrieve relevant information.
Lookup Failure Handling: If the database lookup fails (e.g., due to an account number not being found), the script will play a prompt asking the caller to re-enter the account number or take appropriate action based on the specific requirements.
Successful Lookup: If the database lookup is successful, the script will re-queue the call to a live agent while attaching the retrieved account data to the session. This ensures that the caller is connected to the most suitable agent with the necessary information.
IVR Call Transaction Completion: Finally, the script will conclude the IVR call transaction, effectively ending the interaction within the IVR application.

This script demonstrates how IVR applications can efficiently handle caller interactions by guiding them through a structured process and seamlessly transferring them to live agents when necessary.

Complete solution for bots

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) offers a comprehensive solution for implementing bots across various text media channels such as chat, SMS, email, WhatsApp, and more. There are two primary types of text bots:

Rules-Based Bots: These bots can only respond to very specific predefined commands. If customers don’t use recognized commands or words, the bot won’t comprehend the inquiry and won’t be able to provide a response.
AI-Powered Bots: Leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, these bots can provide more sophisticated and context-aware responses, enhancing the customer experience.

SCC provides support for both types of bots, and depending on the complexity of the requirements, they can be:

Entirely Composed within Scripter: Users can create and manage bots entirely within Scripter, allowing for customization and control over bot behavior.
Integrated Third-Party Products via Scripter: For more advanced AI-powered bots or when integrating with third-party bot solutions, Scripter can be used to seamlessly incorporate these bots into the SCC ecosystem.

This flexibility empowers organizations to deploy bots that align with their specific needs, whether they require simple rules-based interactions or more sophisticated AI-driven responses to enhance customer interactions.

Creating a text bot script

With Scripter, users can design text bots to handle a wide range of customer service activities, including tasks such as delivery confirmations, health center inquiries, product maintenance requests, and providing information such as timetables.

Scripter provides the capability to access external systems or information sources, allowing the bot to collect data to make informed decisions and enhance the quality of bot interactions.

In the provided example of a Weather Bot script:

The bot initiates by requesting the customer’s nearest town.
It then executes a custom step to retrieve current weather data from openweathermap.org.
Finally, the bot informs the customer about the weather status, description, and temperature for the specified location.

To better understand customer intentions, Scripter incorporates a Text Processing Library, including a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine. This feature aids in interpreting and responding to customer messages more effectively, improving the overall quality of Bot interactions.

For further insights into Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Bots, you can explore additional resources.

Integrating external bot and conversational AI services

Scripter users enjoy the flexibility to extend their customer conversations by seamlessly integrating with external Bot and conversational AI engines. In this scenario, Scripter acts as an intermediary for all text-based communication between customers and the external service, facilitating a smooth interaction flow:

Customer Interaction: The customer initiates the conversation by sending a text message.
Scripter Handling: Scripter takes the customer’s text and forwards it to the external bot or conversational AI service for processing.
Service Response: The external service may respond in various ways:

– It can provide a response to be passed back to the customer.

– It might instruct Scripter to continue the text communication with a live agent. This can occur if the customer explicitly requests agent assistance or if the service determines that agent involvement is necessary.

When a session is transferred from a Bot or live agent to another live agent, Scripter ensures that all session history is preserved and made available. This eliminates the need to re-establish customer identity or repeat previous interactions, streamlining the customer support process.

This approach allows organizations to provide comprehensive customer support, leveraging the capabilities of external AI services while seamlessly involving live agents when required, ultimately enhancing the customer experience.